Category Archives: Muddled Musings

There She Is, Miss Concussive Trauma

 

Two American TV institutions checked into hospice last month.

Of course, no one is going to officially pronounce dead the Miss America Pageant and the National Football League. Nostalgia and straggling sponsors alone would never permit it.

But both near-century-old organizations (Miss America was founded in 1921, the NFL in 1920) entered the autumn of their TV lives with a single rule change and a call for another. And make no mistake: To die on American television (and hence forfeit social relevance) is to die in America. Just ask Roseanne Barr or Jon Stewart.

Miss America and the NFL’s  hospice stays may be indefinite, like Broadway plays. And they may enjoy brief public remissions — also like Broadway plays. They may even produce the occasional Hamilton: something you haven’t seen, but you’ve heard good things.

Still, it was hard not to hear the buzzard caws with the latest headlines (or lack thereof). The first came on June 5, when Miss America officials announced they were ditching the bathing suit and evening gown competitions in favor of “a more interactive experience with judges to showcase the beauty inside,” one press release peacocked.

The news was greeted with uniform praise. ‘It’s a Start,’ the website Vox proclaimed.

I think you may be looking through the wrong end of the binoculars, Vox. A start of what? A better way to parade show ponies? It’s hard enough to grasp how any pageants still exist in the #Metoo landscape. These are the actual opening lyrics to the Miss America theme song, as written by Bernie Wayne (you weren’t expecting a female composer, were you?):

“There she is, Miss America
There she is, your ideal
The dreams of a million girls”

Barbie couldn’t have said it better herself.

Miss America, in particular, has a rich history of not reading the room. Consider past pageants; Which stand out more: the dresses/bikinis on display or the imbecilic questions/answers in the interview session? It was Old Faithful humor for late night comedians and smarmy news anchors.

Also, how is judging internal beauty any less absurd than judging the external? Is it less offensive to say, ‘Sorry, you’re not as  pretty on the inside as Miss Idaho’? How the fuck do you know? Isn’t it more insulting? And will we see 300-pound Miss Americas? I’d love it, but I doubt it.

Just be honest, pageant organizers. As TV entertainment, you’re on life support because you’re ignoring your core drives, conveniently tucked in the Seven Deadly: lust and envy. In 1921, Miss America began as a “bathing beauty revue,” as that was about as much skin as you could publicly flaunt back then. Today’s Internet has already nullified the sexuality to the show. And if viewers want an actual and entertaining measure of internal beauty, there’s lots of choices, including the National Spelling Bee and Jeopardy!

The second group’s demise is a little more subtle, and a helluva lot more nefarious.

On June 20, Brett Favre — the former Green Bay Packers star quarterback, current Wisconsin god and future Hall of Famer,  granted an interview to England’s The Daily Mail. In it, Favre, the poster boy of NFL toughness, made the startling admission that not only did he fear he suffered from Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but that children should not be allowed to play tackle football until kids are at least 12.

“The body, the brain, the skull is not developed in your teens and single digits,” he told the paper. “I cringe. I see these little kids get tackled and the helmet is bigger than everything else on the kid combined. They look like they’re going to break in half.”

He said he came to the conclusion after seeing his own kids express an interest in playing.

“Maybe that’s selfish, but what are the odds of him becoming the next Brett Favre? What if he plays one year, gets a major concussion, and is never the same,” Favre said. “I would feel horrible.”

This is tantamount to Babe Ruth renouncing fast-pitch baseball. If American mothers gain wind of the Favre interview, the sport is done. Mothers decide what games we play. How many are going to allow Junior to suit up when a legend of the sport tells won’t let his own kid play because of the deadly risk?

Even more damning: the way news outlets covered the interview, which was barely. ESPN had a 30-second spot in the middle of its nightly sports newscast. But the network owns multi-million dollar  rights to future NFL broadcasts. They will inevitably lose a fortune if America quits tossing the pigskin. Ulterior motive, anyone?

You could be a little more honest too, Gipper. The NFL also exists in two of the Seven Deadly realms: Greed and wrath. You know your existence comes courtesy of the primal urge to watch human beings bludgeon one another into retardation. We loved it with the Greeks, we love it with the Cowboys.

Perhaps American institutions simply have a century-old expiration date in an ever-changing zeitgeist. It’s fitting that both of these institutions once represented the height of femininity and masculinity. Miss America and the winning Super Bowl quarterback were once America’s prom king and queen.  But the years have morphed them into measures of the toxicity of gender identity.

But fear not, ogle junkies. Pornhub gets nearly as many queries as Google, so your prurient needs aren’t aren’t at risk.

As for brain-bruising-free competition, ESPN has ramped up coverage of non-concussive sports, including championship darts and drone racing. They even began national coverage of the picnic sport of the masses, in which you toss a beanbag at a target with a hole in the center.

It’s called cornhole. Seriously. If ESPN has its way, you’ll soon ask your soulmate, “Let’s skip the movie. Can we go cornholing?”

Who says you can’t mix sport with sexiness?

 

 

 

 

 

The Forever Minute

“For god is but Dog with dyslexia.” — Ssad Mar

Esme and I are prone to rituals, particularly around dinner.

Every day about 5:30 p.m., I prepare my evening meds. Every day about 5:30 p.m., Esme watches, waiting for me to prepare her dinner.

Girl is serious about her kibble. When Teddy was the only pup in Dogtown, I could leave food heaped in a bowl. He would eat what he wanted, when he wanted, and somehow never gained a pound. Leather wallets must increase metabolism rates, because he ate a few of those, too.

But when Esme entered the scene, Teddy quickly learned that if he didn’t eat his entire dinner when it was served, his entire dinner would be eaten for him. She’s as smart as a whip, but Esme clearly believes haste makes taste: She resembles  a penguin who eats her emotions.

Until she finishes her meal and get outside, where she turns into a greyhound racer for another routine, when we say good night to the day.

It goes something like this: I chuck one of her tennis balls on the roof, waiting for it to roll down shingles, clatter over the aluminum patio awning and bounce to a near-perfect height for Esme leap and fetch. We’ll do that, literally, until Esme runs out of energy and retires indoors (with the ball; I guess she presumes me too stupid to know she wants to stop otherwise).

Last week, we were in the middle of the day’s farewell routine. Roll, clatter, bounce. Roll, clatter, bounce.

Perhaps it was the California-coated dusk. Perhaps it was the song playing (“Bittersweet Symphony”). Perhaps it was the sugar high. Whatever the reason, I was so overcome by this sentiment I said it aloud:

“I wish this moment would never end.”

How often, I thought, do I say that? Not enough, that’s for sure. How often do any of us say it enough?

I don’t mean during a trip to Disneyland. Or down the aisle. Or toward the acquisition of something treasured.

I mean in the middle of the dishes. I mean during the morning commute. I mean waiting for the microwave popcorn.

Why does it take something blatantly memorable to be remembered? And even then, it is almost always in retrospect. How often have we told ourselves, ‘Man, I wish I could have that time back. If I realized how special it was, I would have enjoyed it more.’

Great news: Now is special. And it’s just waiting for someone to enjoy the fuck out of it.

Think of that minute just before dinner, perhaps mankind’s favorite moment on the spectrum of human pleasure. It is already a bounty. You may not even be hungry. You may not care for the food you’re eating — yet again. You may have a ton of errands awaiting you after the last swallow.

Even more reason to recognize the beauty of humdrum. Instead of saying grace to some invisible superhero that chose to feed you and starve others, why not collectively wish that everyday moment would never end? Mundane, yes. Dull, you bet. Repetitive, no doubt. But a day will come, sure as sunrise, that we see the beauty of banality. That the absence of hell is, to some measure, heavenly.

Roll, clatter, bounce. Roll, clatter, bounce.

 

 

The Species of Origins

 

I can barely microwave a Pop Tart. Yet Anthony Bourdain’s suicide this weekend really threw me for a loop.

Not for my love of food, obviously. But I discovered him during a hospital stay a couple years ago in which the TV remote control broke. One afternoon, I was force-fed  his Parts Unknown series on CNN. Then I watched another. And another. By the end of the stay, I had watched him criss-cross the world in a sort of international potluck dinner prep.

Like I said, boiling water and I are not on speaking terms. But his show, I later discovered, was never really about food. If anything, it was about journalism: meeting strangers, collecting anecdotal histories, asking open questions. Like the comedians of late-night TV, who have used parody to become the nation’s most influential political reporters, Bourdain connected with us by using food as verbs, spices as nouns, sauces as adjectives.

My fandom was confirmed with a tiny bit of research on him, when I discovered he was the son of a New York Times copy editor and routinely wandered newsroom halls. It cemented when I saw an interview in which he waxed philosophical that most of our introductions to new cultures are through the taste bud. More importantly, he said, we seal our relationships over meals, where anecdotes flow like wine. That’s Journalism 101.

Now he’s gone. Like Kate Spade, Robin Williams, Chris Cornell and endlessly on. And these were people at the top of humanity’s evolutionary chain: rich, creative, free to travel and purchase much of the world. It’s enough to draw you to an unnerving realization: We have over-evolved.

While Charles Darwin has no chapter on overevolution in his seminal book on natural selection, he has plenty on underevoltion, instances when a species could not adapt quickly enough to changes in their environment and perished. Roughly 99.5% of every species that ever existed on this planet have joined the cloud circuit, scientists estimate.

But if there are so many examples on that extreme of the continuum, what about the other? The Humane Society estimates an overpopulation of dozens of creatures, from Australia’s kangaroo baby boom to England’s badger surplus to Central America’s coyote explosion to Africa’s python epidemic. America is overrun by white-tailed deer.

And, of course, there’s us, 7.62 billion strong and growing, making us the world leader in overevolution.

Consider our other symptoms of evolving a bridge too far:

  • Suicide There are about 16,000 homicides a year in the U.S. But there are 40,000 annual suicides, a number that has increased 30% since 1999. When a species is three times more likely to kill itself than other members of the species, it’s overevolved.
  • http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-front-end-repository/js/uploadify/uploadify.css Brain size We’ve gotten too smart for our own good. Our brains have evolved into such large organs that, without medical advancements, more than 20% of the world’s births would end in maternal or infant mortality. When a noggin is a deadly threat during childbirth, it’s overevolved.
  • Host threat When a species is capable of ending all life on its host planet, it’s overevolved.
  • Oxygen bars

I know Darwin died in 1882, but maybe the president could ask him to revise the book. After all, Trump keeps in contact with Frederick Douglass.

And now, less combustible factslaps:

  • About 20% of the world’s tech founders are immigrants, even though immigrants only make up about 4 percent of the world’s population.
  • Richard Nixon was an accomplished musician who could play the piano, accordion, violin, saxophone and clarinet.
  • The Moon gets hit by over 6,000 pounds of meteor material per day.
  • A study found that orcas can learn to speak dolphin.
  • Canada’s national parks are free for children.
  • Researchers have found that muscle soreness after a workout doesn’t necessarily mean you’re growing more muscle.
  • Vicodin’s name is based on it being approximately six (VI in roman numerals) times stronger than codeine.
  • In 1494, Michelangelo, at the age of 19, was commissioned by the ruler of Florence to sculpt a snowman in his mansion’s courtyard.

    Piero de Medici ordered Michelangelo to build a snowman.

    And finally, a neighborly word from Mr. Rogers, who gave the U.S. Senate its most elegant description of what should be mankind’s evolutionary plateau, and would have been such a beautiful message for Tony Bordain to have taken within: